It's an emotional point of bonding, to be sure, when you see (or hear) that pulsing red signal of a baby's cardiac activity, present even in the embryonic child.
But the reality is, the baby is alive and growing and biologically splendid even before there is cardiac activity. The event of fertilization itself means the deed is done! Thanks be to God: a new human lives: through gestation and birth, through maturity and death, and unto eternity: a human being to the glory of God.
Even Eve, though a sinner, could see this with the first baby ever born:
"I have gotten a man, with the help of the Lord." (Gen 4:1)
I agree with you. We both know that life happens at conception, but the point is trying to back the left into a corner, admitting there is a life in that womb.
To answer your question, the heartbeat is a tangible, definite point in development that translates as a universally recognized sign of life.
Even the most pro-abortion leftists will tell you that END of life is when the heart stops beating. The idea is to say that WHENEVER the heart is beating, it shows life.
quote: The event of fertilization itself means the deed is done!
No. The fertilized egg (a cluster of rapidly dividing cells) has to implant in the uterine lining, or in another healthy body tissue, and grow there, or no significant development can occur—no source of nourishment and waste removal for the growing embryo otherwise, and the fertilized egg will just run out of stored energy and start to disintegrate and pass out of the uterus and be discarded in the environment where other uterine fluids and shed cells go. That’s one reason some believe that IUD’s, which create an environment hostile to uterine implantation, are a form of abortion.